Conventionally, microplates have been used in analysis of components such as blood and body fluids, and each of such microplates consists of a plurality of reaction containers referred to as wells provided in a matrix. A sample containing a substance to be analyzed, and a reaction reagent containing a substance that causes an antigen-antibody reaction with the substance to be analyzed are dispensed into each well of the microplates. Then, after the passage of a predetermined period of time since the dispensing, whether or not an agglutination reaction has occurred in the well is captured by image capturing means such as a CCD camera, and the image data obtained by this image capturing is used to analyze the components of the sample.
In the analysis described above, a determination of being a negative or positive is made based on the captured-image data (captured image) obtained by capturing an image of a reactant, and contamination of a foreign substance largely influences the analysis result. In order to check reaction results accurately, it is important to perform analysis processing on a reactant free of foreign substances. In regards to such a demand, a checking method is disclosed for detecting the pressure in a dispensing tube by a pressure sensor, capturing an image of a container by a CCD camera, and checking a suction amount and a dispensing amount in order to prevent contamination of foreign substances from occurring (see, for example, Patent Literature 1).
Patent Literature 1: Japanese Laid-Open Publication No. 2000-193670